Thursday, July 23, 2009

Films of the 00s: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Well, some things never change, and I guess the conversation-killing power of Up at the Villa is one of those things. I didn't pick this as my next post on purpose to attract more comments, but I suspect you all will have more to say. O brothers and sisters and everyone in between, what think thou?:

"The Coens are not always as smart as they pretend to be, even when they admit that they are pretending, and even when they use their own dramatis personae to set an ostentatiously low bar for their own comparative wit and urbanity. Normally, I'd be only too happy to snuggle up to a movie with lines of dialogue like 'She's at the 5 & Dime, buying nickels' or, with great consternation, 'These boys desecrated a fiery cross!' But the Coens are like party acquaintances who keep changing the subject and then staring at you quizzically when you can't follow the thread, or when you stop wanting to follow it, but who then block all your exit routes from their obnoxious conversation. They make it damned hard to pan one of their technically prepossessing, unimpeachably distinctive films without collapsing into standby allegations about their coldness and their cruelty."(keep reading...)

I've done more '00 viewing in the mornings before work than I'm letting on in the sidebar. Possible future topics of conversation: hijacked buses, split screens, Iranian smugglers, Staten Island, Pikey boxers, African feminism, dead whales at midnight, gays of the past, and gays out West. What sounds good?

10 Comments:

Admittedly, I haven't visited these last few days, but I'm not sure if I'd have found something useful to say about "Up at the Villa" even if I had, given that I remember it as one of those wallpaper films whose pleasantly lulling politeness extended to its usually spiky stars. (Both of whom I adore.) Once more, your writing compels me to give it another look.

I have no such desire regarding "O Brother," however, because your revised review precisely pinpoints everything that I found agonising about the film in the first place. I do remember thinking at the time that the one thing in its favor was that it sealed Clooney's movie-star chops -- if only because his goofiness seems to come from a sincere (if befuddled) place, rather than the smugly programmed zaniness of its makers.

The film pretty much caused a seven-year trial separation between me and the Coens until we patched up our differences over "No Country."

(Even the soundtrack has faded over time for me, though that could be due to a long road trip during which we somehow lost all our other CDs and had no radio signal. On the plus side, I can recite the lyrics to "Big Rock Candy Mountain" at the drop of a hat. I forget why that's a plus.)

I remember being totally bewildered by this film. Saw it a few years ago so my memory is sketchy ( co-incidentally, so is the film :-P ) but generally couldn't get into it. The plot wasn't really interesting or expansive enough and the whole thing was unfunny. Reminded me a lot of a stage production too.

Adam Mars-Jones put it well in a review once: "The Coen Brothers are very knowing and everything, but what exactly do they know?"

A tough question to answer. It always surprises people when I lay into O Brother, as if there was nothing in such a dawdling, layabout exercise that was worth getting fussed about. I love this piece because you've captured what's so thoughtless and gross about it, as well as meandering. Maybe it's not their very worst film, stacked up next to the almost eerily pointless Ladykillers, but it's certainly the one that gets the easiest ride of all their work, right?

This review is poopy. What the reviewer implies is that a tale has to follow some perfect thread. Is that how your life goes, seamlessly from scene to scene? This film tells a story, a fable, take from it what you will. That is what fables do best, let you take from it what pertains. That you only saw flaws, as if the flaws themselves hold no significance or import, says more of you than this film. Not every message need be obtuse to be worthy. A gleeful eye has too its story to tell.

The author of this review is defiently not as smart as they pretend to be. This document is almost unreadable as the author takes every chance to show-off how many words they can pack in one mindnumbing sentence at a time, which goes a long way in undermining whatever point they were trying to make.

Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television ($32/pbk). Ed. Michael DeAngelis. Wayne State University Press, 2014.
Academic pieces that dig into recent portraits in popular media, comic and dramatic, of intimacies between straight(ish) men. Includes the essay
"'I Love You, Hombre': Y tu mamá también as Border-Crossing Bromance" by Nick Davis, as well as chapters on Superbad, Humpday, Jackass, The Wire, and other texts. Written for a mixed audience of scholars, students, and non-campus readers. Forthcoming in June 2014. "Remarkably sophisticated essays." Janet Staiger, "Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary models of gender and sexuality." Harry Benshoff

Fifty Key American Films ($31/pbk). Ed. Sabine Haenni, John White. Routledge, 2009. Includes my essays on
The Wild Party,
The Incredibles, and
Brokeback Mountain. Intended as both a newcomer's guide to the terrain
and a series of short, exploratory essays about such influential works as The Birth of a Nation, His Girl Friday, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,
Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Daughters of the Dust, and Se7en.

The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven
Allows ($25/pbk). Ed. James Morrison. Wallflower Press, via Columbia University Press, 2007. Includes the essay
"'The Invention of a People': Velvet Goldmine and the Unburying of Queer Desire" by Nick Davis, later expanded and revised in The Desiring-Image.
More, too, on Poison, Safe, Far From Heaven, and Haynes's other films by Alexandra Juhasz, Marcia Landy,
Todd McGowan, James Morrison, Anat Pick, and other scholars. "A collection as intellectually and emotionally
generous as Haynes' films" Patricia White, Swarthmore College

Film Studies:
The Basics ($23/pbk). By Amy Villarejo. Routledge, 2006, 2013. Award-winning
film scholar and teacher Amy Villarejo finally gives us the quick, smart, reader-friendly guide to film vocabulary that every
teacher, student, and movie enthusiast has been waiting for, as well as a one-stop primer in the past, present, and future of film production, exhibition,
circulation, and theory. Great glossary, wide-ranging examples, and utterly unpretentious prose that remains rigorous in its analysis;
the book commits itself at every turn to the artistry, politics, and accessibility of cinema.

Most recent screenings in each race;
multiple nominees appear wherever they scored their most prestigious nod...
and yes, that means Actress trumps Actor!

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